


Void

by Nice_Valkyrie



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: F/M, Introspection, Ishval Civil War, Woman on Top
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-01
Updated: 2017-12-01
Packaged: 2019-02-09 04:38:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12880335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nice_Valkyrie/pseuds/Nice_Valkyrie
Summary: Riza can’t get Kimblee’s words out of her head. That’s probably why she finds herself standing in front of his tent.





	Void

_The one thing worse than death is to avert your eyes from it._

Riza knew the words were meant for her, too, even though Kimblee hadn’t been looking at her when he said it. She hadn’t been able to meet his eyes for very long—they were too intense. She’d looked at her shaking hands instead, but been aware of his gaze lingering on her. And for the rest of the day those words had echoed in her head.

_Look straight at the people you kill._

She’d excused herself from dinner early. Their rations were difficult to stomach most days, but with thoughts of death and responsibility whirling in her head Riza had been pretty sure she would throw up most of what she managed to eat. Her barracks, though, were just as bad: full of men and women yammering away, or writing letters, or desperately trying to get off under the covers without being observed—or else indifferent to curious eyes.

_I promise that they won’t forget you._

The noise, the eyes, everything was too much for Riza. She went outside. But outside was too quiet: her thoughts were like screaming that the vast silence in her heart couldn’t drown out. So she walked, and found her feet carrying her to the state alchemists’ section of the camp, and then, eventually, to Kimblee’s tent.

She knew it was Kimblee’s tent, because his unnaturally polished boots were sitting just outside. Lantern light spilled out from the edges of the heavy fabric, stretching Riza’s shadow long in front of her. She reached out in front of her with a heavy arm, hesitated just a moment, and slipped inside.       

Kimblee was reclined on his bed with a book open on his lap. He was in uniform pants, but they looked clean, and so did his cream-colored undershirt and bare feet. His gaze flicked to her as she let the tent flap fall closed behind her, and a little smile appeared on his face. “I thought it was going to be you,” he said.

Riza remained where she was. Two possibilities occurred to her. The first was that Kimblee had heard her footsteps and correctly deduced who was walking up to his tent so late in the evening. The other option was that as he had looked at each of them in turn that morning, watching their faces as he told them the truth about their crimes, he had identified her as the most likely to go to him afterwards. Riza wasn’t sure how she felt about either option.

For that matter, she wasn’t even sure why she was here.

Riza walked to the bed with the feeling that someone else was directing her body. Each step felt like it was manifested by something independent of her own will. She sat on the edge of the bed beside Kimblee with her back to him and began unlacing her boots. Behind her, the book shut quietly, and Kimblee shifted slightly to put it aside.

When she was done she swung around and stretched her legs out on the bed. She looked at Kimblee’s legs beside her own, studied the ways they were different from hers. His were much larger, clearly more muscular even within the loosely-fitted pants, and his feet were deathly pale and long-toed. Riza couldn’t quite bring herself to look at his face, even though she was fairly certain he was looking at her now.

Instead, she slid her hand over to where his rested on the blanket and turned it over to—oh. She had forgotten about the tattoos. Instead of the lines of his palm, Riza traced the dark ink of the array and played with his unresponsive fingers. The tattoo was sharp and clear; she had no idea how old it was, but the ink must have been deep under his skin to have stood up to daily wear. Had it hurt more than her own?

Kimblee let out the tiniest of sighs.

That small, impatient breath snapped Riza out of her trance _._ Fine, then. She dropped his hand and slid down on the bed until she was lying flat, then turned on her side to face Kimblee. She was eye-level with his hip now. For several long seconds, he gave no indication that he would move, and Riza started to question the whole thing. Did he think—what did he expect—?

Then Kimblee scooted himself down, too, mirroring her position, though he balanced one arm on his hip rather than folding both in front of his chest. Now Riza had no choice but to look at him. Kimblee’s eyes were almost green in the yellow lamplight, but cold, like looking across a vast, frozen wasteland. She felt caught, pinned by his attention as his gaze roved over her face and throat.

He seemed to be expecting Riza to do something. So she did: she scooted forward, took his chin in her hand, and kissed him.

That, at last, got a response out of him. Kimblee moved his hand to the small of her back and pulled her close. He tasted strongly of the mint toothpaste included in their kits, and Riza wondered if it was as obvious that she had also brushed her teeth shortly before coming here. Kimblee was very warm, and he smelled nice, and her arms were crushed against his lean chest. Riza extracted one and touched some of the hair that had fallen out of his ponytail. It felt smooth. That was the scent she was enveloped by: freshly-washed hair and skin.

Kimblee wasn’t shy. He moved down from Riza’s mouth to cover her neck with soft, wet kisses. His hands roamed over her, trailing down her neck and back and then, brazenly, over the curve of her ass. When he squeezed it, he let his fingers slip down until they almost touched her cleft and then pulled them away, over and over. Riza’s face was flushed, and she was unsurprised to note that she was already wet.

Up and down, Kimblee felt her body, his touch light but firm. He forced one hand between them to cup her breast and sucked her lower lip into his mouth. She hooked her leg over Kimblee’s hip, matching his boldness, bringing them as close as they could be without losing their clothes. His growing erection pushed against her. That made her wet, too.

Kimblee slipped his hand up and around her neck, into her hair. He was obviously used to longer hair: when he tried to grasp a handful of hers, it took him a few tries before he could gather enough to get a good grip. Perhaps in response, he tugged on it more painfully than Riza had expected. She had the absurd flash of an idea of taking his ponytail and yanking on it like a child.

She stifled the giggle. Kimblee paused.

“What is it?” He seemed annoyed.

“Nothing,” said Riza, and for good measure, she added, “Keep going.”

“Hm,” he said, and his hand was abruptly between her legs. Riza closed her eyes and tensed as Kimblee found her clit through her pants and rubbed it. There was nothing teasing about this maneuver: he wanted her to know exactly what he meant. It was slightly too forceful to really feel good, but it was the intent that made her shudder.

Then Kimblee tried to hike her shirt up.

Riza stopped him. “No,” she said. She was a little concerned that he would react badly, but this was too important to risk.

“No?” Kimblee didn’t sound angry. He sounded…indifferent.

Riza started pulling up his shirt instead. Kimblee caught her hand. “No,” he said with a mocking edge. He put her hand on his erection and curled her fingers around it.   

When she caught her breath, Riza began undoing his pants with her other hand. Kimblee looked down at himself, his forehead pressed against hers, and watched as she pulled him free. He tried to put her hand back on his cock, but instead she grabbed a handful of his shirt, kissed him hard so she wouldn’t have to meet his eyes, and grinded against him. After a moment, he let go of her wrist and hitched her leg around him again.

This wasn’t at all what she had expected. Kimblee had always given her the impression of an aggressive lover, when she had managed to imagine him as a human being. And he seemed to have no qualms about pushing things forward. But whenever she rebuffed him, he allowed it, effectively letting her set the pace here. Why was that? 

It would have made her nervous, if Kimblee hadn’t distracted her by undoing her pants. That was simpler. Riza shucked the pants off—he did the same with his own—and when they were both naked from the waist down she turned her knee out to spread her legs a little.

Kimblee sucked on two of his fingers for a moment, then reached down to press them against her. When they slid in easily, he made an approving noise in his throat. Both fingers at once was more than Riza had expected, but Kimblee stroked her in a way that sent hot waves through her and turned the pressure into something delicious. When he took his hand away, Riza felt empty and hungry.

Kimblee put the slick fingers to her lips and watched closely as she accepted them. “Good,” he murmured.

If Riza could taste her body and not find herself intolerable, could she do the same thing for her soul?

Kimblee removed his fingers from Riza’s mouth and rolled onto his back, pulling her on top of him. Riza knelt over him and was suddenly, keenly aware of the intimacy of their contact below their stomachs. It was bizarre to put her hand on his chest and feel cloth, while further down the length of his cock pressed against her bare skin.

She had no diseases, though she couldn’t be sure about him; when she looked down, he appeared healthy, at least. And she was due to get her period in a few days. There was something about the wrongness of it all that spurred her on, an odd combination of the thrill of risk and indifference to its consequences. “You’ll have to pull out,” she told him.

Kimblee snorted. “Of course. I’m not stupid.”

Riza positioned herself and felt the head of his cock nudging into her. _No going back now_ , she thought, even though the point of no return had long since passed her by. Then she pushed herself down. It took only a few moments to work him fully inside her; when she looked up, she was pleased that Kimblee was watching her intently. He gripped her hard, digging his fingers into her hips, and encouraged her to slide up and then down again.

It occurred to her then that if he didn’t want to pull out, if he wanted to hold her tightly and come inside her, he was likely strong enough to do so. Somehow the realization didn’t make Riza want to flee. There was a sense of danger, yes, but it was a close and present danger, rather than an abstract threat to her soul like everything else in this godforsaken place. Riza felt the blood pound in her body and decided it was tolerable. Preferable.

So she rode him, a little fast, as he looked at her and moved with her. Aside from the wet sounds and the slight creaking of the bed, it was quiet in the tent. Kimblee was breathing hard, but made no other noise as she fucked him. He kept his hands on her hips to help maintain her rhythm and rubbed her clit with one thumb. Riza stayed quiet, too, even though it felt good. She focused on the thread of rising tension that pulled from between her legs, on how the sensation tightened under Kimblee’s insistent touch.

Riza had the distinct feeling of being watched. Kimblee was watching her, of course, his eyes shining like a cat’s even as his expression conveyed only mild interest. But there was something stranger. It was the same feeling she’d experienced when she had come to the tent, and that, she now realized, she had been feeling on and off since she had arrived in Ishval. It was the feeling of being outside herself. Riza’s body had been walking around the desert, pulling the trigger on a gun, choking down rations, killing, coughing up dust. Riza’s spirit had been floating above her, removed from her body but tethered to it, observing silently. And as the days in Ishval wore on, the thread that connected them had been weakening, and Riza had felt that one good trigger-worthy pull would do it, would sever that attachment and let her float farther and farther away until—

Until now.

Right now she was closer to wholeness than she had been in a long time. And Kimblee was responsible. Kimblee, with his cock in her. Kimblee, of all people, was tugging on that thread, strengthening the connection, pulling her back into her body. Just like he’d slammed her into despair that morning, he was fucking her back into her own right mind—

No. That was silly.

Kimblee could have been anyone. Anybody. That was all he was, just a body, warm and solid and serviceable, but empty. She wasn’t connecting with him; in truth, that was probably impossible. It was the essential animality of her own body that Riza was reaching for and finding, and that part of her was inescapable.

The thought was comforting, in its own strange way.

Riza brushed Kimblee’s hand away and replaced it with her own. She heard him laugh, but yet again he didn’t reassert himself. Riza sank lower on his cock and stopped moving, giving her full attention to what her hand was doing. Kimblee matched her intent, switching the even thrusts for a slow, steady rocking that rubbed deliciously against her on the inside. A soft moan escaped her.

“That’s it,” murmured Kimblee, and his voice made the encouragement something slimy. Riza looked up, confused. Kimblee was watching for her reaction with a little anticipatory smile that didn’t reach his cold, cold eyes.

Riza looked down, then back at him, then away again, unable to handle the ice in his eyes but unwilling to concede that weakness. Why was she thinking about death? She worked her hand faster and tried to find something else. There were things she had thought about during sex, before, to get her there when her partner was lacking, but now—nothing would come—

There was nothing else. Death was all around her in Ishval. There was death on her hands, in her mind, death in Kimblee’s eyes, and the little death now building between her legs. She hadn’t been able to have an orgasm since she’d arrived here. And death was a part of her now, like her tattoo and sex and the heat rushing over her skin. Riza didn’t avert her eyes. She was here, and so was Kimblee, but he might as well have not been—it might as well have just been her alone in Ishval in the tent in her own body—

When she came, Riza gave herself over to the nothingness, and for a few perfect, throbbing seconds she wasn’t there anymore.

As soon as she let her hand drop away, Kimblee was reaching up and bending her forward, pulling her down against his chest. He fucked her that way, faster than before, as Riza buried her face against his neck. The residual sensitivity made her clench around him again, and she savored that too, each pulse reaffirming her awareness.  

“That was lovely,” he said in her ear, pleased, like she had done it for his benefit. “It’s wonderful to watch you try to break yourself against me.”

She understood then why he had seemingly given her all the control. Kimblee knew, somehow, why she was here. Of course he did. He knew that she was hollowed out with despair and desperate for comfort—desperate enough to go to someone who would happily use her. After all, he had made her feel that way. And he knew, as she did, that the shame would be all the more acute if she was its author. If she was the one who decided to fuck him, decided to come with him inside her, decided to let him use her for his own release.

Kimblee’s body was starting to stick to hers where they touched; when she inhaled the scent of his skin, sweat mixed with the soap. His breath was hot against her neck, and the rhythm of his thrusts was faltering.

What Kimblee hadn’t realized—what he didn’t, couldn’t know—was that Riza had already found the answer. The sex wasn’t meaningless to her, but he could be. He was.  

“Pull out,” she reminded him.

Kimblee made no response, but without warning he seized her hair again and began fucking her much harder. What remained of Riza’s wetness was being used up, and as he slammed into her it became, for the first time, painful. Riza squeezed her eyes shut and whimpered.

Almost immediately, Kimblee growled, slid himself out, and rolled her over on her back. He went up on his knees, his hand on his cock, and before she could stop him, hitched her shirt up over her belly button. Riza yanked it back down; he rolled his eyes, but grinned and left it alone, straightening her legs with his free hand and positioning himself over her.

The difference between them, Riza concluded, as she watched him work himself with quick, hard strokes, was a heart. They would have different memories of this, to be sure, but she would carry more than just the physical experiences—the lingering buzzing in her arms and legs, the way Kimblee’s shoulders hunched forward as he got close, and how his voice broke through his ragged breathing in spite of himself—she would have the memory of the emotions, too. Kimblee would have no such catharsis. He hadn’t needed to drain away his own fear and disgust. He had only wanted an easy fuck. He had only wanted _this_ —to come, shuddering, in hot spurts over her thighs.

That was fine. Kimblee couldn’t ruin the bone-deep, confident indifference Riza felt at seeing his semen on her skin. That security was hers alone. Kimblee slithered off the bed and found a rag, which he used to clean himself first. Then he pushed Riza’s thighs apart and wiped himself off her, even scraping the rough cloth over her sensitive folds. She winced, but she was too wrung out to react beyond that.

They were both silent as they dressed. Riza watched Kimblee, who for once wasn’t looking at her; for how he acted, she might have been gone already. He brought his boots back inside, setting them neatly by the rest of his uniform. Then he took down what had survived of his ponytail and began combing through it with his fingers, his face blank. Riza finished lacing her own boots and stood up. “Thanks,” she said.

Kimblee looked at her then, one eyebrow raised incredulously.

She knew she sounded pathetic, like she was grateful for his attention and touch. He could think that or anything else he wanted. It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter at all.

Riza paused just before she left, inhaling again and memorizing the way it felt to have breath fill her body. Then she pushed the tent open and walked back out into the wide dark Ishvallan night.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading. Comments and constructive criticism are always appreciated. 
> 
> Although not a direct inspiration, it would be remiss of me not to link bob_fish's excellent [ Blush Response ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/150277), another "sleeping with Kimblee to try to work out your own conflicted feelings about the war" story.


End file.
